Ex-employee blows the gaff on HP secrets

A lot of what he says makes perfect sense and I'm sure a lot of companies do some of them, as for the rest? Well... especially the bit about the page count, I can't say its not true but surely if they did such a thing they would have been unable to keep it quiet for so long.I think its a mix, some is probably right and some is not.Make your own mind up I think.

I ran the UK Inbound call centre for 3 years and not once did we get told to hang up an anyone unless it was an abusive customer and only then after three warnings stating clearly that we will hang up if their behaviour did not modify.

Cartridges do have a separate warranty, that's a good thing! They are expensive and they contain more technology than the Ink-jet printer they fit into. The printer is a swap-out not a fix on site. And yes, if third party cartridges or re-fill are used it will void the warranty until you put HP ones in. Sounds fair to me.

As for the drum kit. It has a life span, it decays. No idea how but it is photo sensitive so I guess the exposure to light decays it.

HondaMan perhaps its a reason not to believe it.To decide to buy or not to buy on the basis of what one man says is OTT. Much better to get advice on this from the horses mouth ie from people who have and use a HP printer.Some of what he says is to me completely ridiculous as any company that did that to people would be out of business in 3 months. Hanging up on people for instance.Some on the other hand sounds like a reasonable business decision, for example HP service techs being told to spend no more than 30 minutes trying to fix a cheap printer. If the printer costs £50 and the mans time costs £50 an hour it doesn't make any sense to spend any length of time trying to fix it now does it? Say he takes 2 hours to fix it. It costs HP £100. If they just sent a new printer to the person it would only have cost them £50. Thats not any sort of con its business. Some items are so cheap they are not worth repairing.

And that page counter will be set to 'a number' by HP. at which time the printer will 'tell you' that it needs to be serviced.

The page count for all models is different and only applicable to the Larger Printers and Plotters designed for business use.

Whether the user decides to have HP service the unit or purchase the User Maintenance Pack and install the parts themselves is up to them. The pack contains Feed and Output Rollers and those friction pads whose name escapes me... ;) amoungst other things and is available from any dealer that sells HP Printers.

On HP colour lasers the drum kit certainly contains a chip with a fixed number beyond which it won't operate, even if it's still working. When pricing consumables for the printer, don't forget to add a drum kit (for a £400 printer the drum kit is about £120). The drum kit may last 20,000 copies, but even if you only use spot colour on a page the counter will go up by 4 (one for each colour) so it's life is only 5,000 pages.

I knew this before reading the link. It's actually in the printer's instructions if you bother to read them. No need to think it's a disaffected employee at all. But who RTFM nowadays?